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The New Force at Lucasfilm
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Mar 27, 2006 10:24 PM
from the feel-the-money-surround-you dept.
from the feel-the-money-surround-you dept.
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interview with the heads of George Lucas' gaming and movie divisions, and discusses with them how they are getting closer and closer to integration. From the article: 'Pre-visualization, which is a big thing that George has been pushing lately. It's a tool that directors would use to quickly mock up the ideas of a story and see what's going to work. It's really like building up a preview of a movie in a video game world. Instead of using static story boards, you can really just get in and create 3D content and camera moves directly. It's the best example of the kind of collaboration we've got going on.'"
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LucasArts Aims for #1 120 comments
The New York Times has an interesting profile of LucasArts, the game development house attached to George Lucas' company. They discuss some challenges with being so closely associated with Star Wars, and detail their role in the Lucasfilm company as a whole. From the article: "[Ward's] most challenging days may be ahead. The videogame industry has been in the doldrums for months; video game sales are lagging as consumers wait to buy the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 3. And perhaps most important, Mr. Lucas has no plans to make any more 'Star Wars' movies. That means LucasArts will have to work that much harder to come up with ideas of its own. 'We are not the Star Wars game company,' said Micheline Chau, president of Lucasfilm. 'And Jim knows what he has to do.'"
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Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 06 2004, @11:48PM)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Still, he's earning more in a second than I do in a month, so he must be doing something right.
Yep... (Score:2, Funny)
I could never work at Lucasfilm (Score:5, Funny)
Full Throttle (Score:2, Interesting)
(http://www.christopherculver.com/)
Re:Full Throttle (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.squigley.net/)
There was a press release about it getting axed, but that most not have had enough Star Wars content either, and it's been deleted, and you get redirected to the home page.
There's a brief article here: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/fullthrottle
And a bit more here: http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,183 [adventuregamers.com]
God I wish Lucas would get over the whole Star Wars thing already.
Pre-visualisation? (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/audent.wordpress.com)
Where?
Come on, it was bad enough Han Fired Second but to make Yoda into Hong Kong Phooey and Darth Vader into a whiny teen... puhleeze.
Worst Use of Natalie Portman Eva.
Some actual visualisation would be nice.
Visualisation is the only thing he's good at now. (Score:5, Insightful)
But, look at each still shot. They look good. The characterization sucks. The plot sucks. The dialog sucks. The timing sucks. The motivation sucks. None of it has any logical flow behind it.
But the still pictures are very nice.
Re:Visualisation is the only thing he's good at no (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you do. I used to be a huge Star Wars geek. I read all the novels, bought the "reference books", absolutely loved the X-Wing games, etc. I quit when Episode I came out. I don't see how you can even compare the quality of the prequels with the incredible stories that other authors have written. Not just Zahn, but nearly every writer has come up with far better material than Lucas. The stories suck. The dialogue sucks, and not just the abysmal Anakin/Padme crap.
Mocap suits (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkblack)
Droidmaker (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors. (Score:1, Insightful)
#1. If it is real life with real actors, you already have years and years of experience looking at it in 3D. It's called "life".
#2. If it's computer animation, it's fake so it doesn't matter. They create what you want them to.
This is where "art" comes in. It's not just directing, it's lighting and cinematography. Playing with a toy isn't going to make your movies any better.
Re:Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a toy for mediocre directors.
If you think that Peter Jackson is a mediocre director, sure. The Lord of the Rings included *numerious* pre-visualization shots. If you watched any of the bonus content on the DVD's, you would see some of the pre-vis stuff on the Mines of Moria scenes where the Fellowship is being chased by the Orcs. I think the movie was fabulous, and if pre-vis made the movie any better (which IMHO it did) then let the mediocre directors continue their work.
Visualization has at least two benefits that I think of right off the top of my head.
1. You as the director may be able to visualize what needs to happen, but communicating that to other people can be difficult if you don't have ESP. This allows the artist to communicate an idea to other people via a medium that is easy to conceptualize. Yes, that's what story boards are for (like the article says), but
2. It allows you to build a set without going through the costly motions of actually having to do it. This goes for virtual sets as well. While this method seems a lot more expensive than hiring a graphic artist to draw it in 2D story board cells, 3D permits you to make changes without having to redraw a whole frame, this in turn allows the crew to explore changes and make iterations very quickly. It also makes a good point of reference for those who are responsible for creating CG add-ins to the movie.
Reminds me of totalwar... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.dappergeek.com/)
I hope ideas like that start becoming more commonplace. I like the idea of using 3-D digital storyboarding in realtime, it sounds pretty awesome. It'll be exciting to see if this turns into more of a production tool that ends up getting used in movie and not just in the development process.
Lucas doesn't like human actors (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 06 2005, @10:30PM)
Welcome to 1999, George (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.fylo.net/)
Peter Jackson and WETA started using pre-vis before production began on LOTR.
Other firms may have used it even earlier.
Plot inspiration (Score:3, Funny)
80-year old Hans Solo: What happen?
Yoda: The bomb has somebody set up us, hmmm...
A marketable purple gay alien chipmunk: We get signal!
Reincarnated Darth Vader: AYBABTU.
Seeing Lucasfilm made me excited, then sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of their recent obsession with 3d, it just doesn't look as good. I would love to see a 2d adventure game from them that would run natively at 1600x1200 and scale down to lower resolutions.
Can anyone honestly look and tell me that this 3d Sam & Max [samandmax.net] has more artistic style than this 2d Sam & Max [samandmax.net]??
Or this [samandmax.net] is better than this [samandmax.net]?
I'm not opposed to 3d games mind you, lord knows I didn't buy this Nvidia board for running OO.org faster and Grim Fandango was utterly phenomenal. I'd just like to see Lucasfilm games, lucasarts, whatever, spend more time in making a well written, well crafted worlds and games, rather than just "Wow, it's an adventure title, but in 3d!"
Like Machinima? (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.deadonque.com/)
Will it be coder or a debugger? (Score:3, Interesting)
The tools we use (like language) influence us in our choices and views. While greater tools can allow greater accomplishments, their purpose is should be to allow a complex process to be addressed simply, not to allow a simple process to be more complex.
In computers, one of the best ways to get a real understanding of computer programming is to debug a program without a debugger. At most, using a couple of print statements to allow some additional helpful information. The advantage to a lack of information is that it requires A) truly understanding how the mechanism works which leads to B) attempting to keep the code human-readable.
In places where a debugger is available, I have seen too often that the tool is use to simply find the problem and move on. After all, if I know that the loop is crashing, break the loop before the end of the run and see why it went too far. This is great for catching simple errors, and I do not knock the debugger for helping me realize that I accidentally incremented the wrong variable. What I do like is that people raised on debuggers generally cannot see anything other than simple operations. It will not explain why mutex is not being freed or many systemic problems; however, because he or she was never forced to think through his or her problems, the symptom of the problem (not the problem itself) is coded around at the location where the problem shows up in the debugger.
I cannot help but think that while this tool will be used to model some nice things, but I think a lot producers fail to realize that most people will happily take some good acting, a reasonable plot line, and intriguing dialog over wiz-bang camera zooms. Thank God for Battlestar Galactic.
writing? (Score:3, Insightful)
is this new? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.fjellstad.org/)
Blue screen hell... (Score:1)
A good example of integration (Score:4, Insightful)
It was the pod race. I kept thinking "why is this in the movie"
Sure enough a day or so after i saw people playing a wipeout clone which features the phantom menace pod race.
I guess this is what they call synergy in the movie business.
A few things.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday April 16 2004, @02:33AM)
Sullivan discusses that pre-viz is a good and modern solution, but he doesn't mention that pre-viz can also be slower and less fine tuned than the work of a storyboard artist. Illustrators can offer style, better/faster continuity, and the ability to develop an entire shot rather than developing rough 3D-geometry. If it were up to me, I'd keep both around.
So sure, the technology and tools get better, but it doesn't necessarily make a better film.
Disney made that mistake with their cel animation department, and they all got laid off (thank god for Lassater).
Square did it with Final Fantasy and threw away the storyline.
ILM seems to be a very traditional studio in the sense that they follow a typical pipeline for production. I just hope they clearly understand the benefits of keeping these illustrators around.
Let me be on the record as saying (Score:1)
F.O.R.C.E (Score:2)
F.O.R.C.E. == Film Origination Realized [through] Computer Enhancement
(in all seriousness though - this is what the Presidio was designed for - was to facilitate extremely high collaboration between the groups developing digital media. I think that (someone) will be successful (moreso than now) with this, I can only hope though that as this tech matures the "plastic-ness" of the generated movies will dissapear (e.g. King Kong)
the human element (Score:2)
I think the collaboration would be better, if it was simply someone with enough balls to say "Hey, George, an Amos and Andy alien is a titanically stupid idea. You should rethink that."
Oh, and listening to him would be a good idea too.
More technical gizmos don't make a basically bad idea any less bad.
misguided, perhaps (Score:1)
Yeah, sure, because when I think of good, well thought and well written stories, I think of that wonderful second trilogy.
Unless those films were meant to mock the fans, in which case they very well lived to their expectations!
sigh... since when do pretty graphics make the story? Seems the gaming industry's been stuck with this too...
-----
Born stupid? Try again.
Lucas-X get over it (Score:2)
Second, Lucas, the future of movies isn't in making everything a special effect. I am sure if George had his way he would have preferred making the last Star Wars film entirely digital, including the actors. For God's sake, there was more emotion and conviction in digital Yoda's performance then ALL the live actors combined (largely because Lucas can't direct, period). As much as computer special effects and 3D rendering is growing in leaps and bounds, it is a fad that will wain. The goal of 3D effects is to make it look realistic, to integrate it into live action to a point where you can no longer tell the difference, not to simply cheap out on set design by having actors jump around in front of green screens.
Lucasarts/film need a new muse, a new product that ISN'T Star Wars or even Indiana Jones to concentrate on. I mean, literally, Lucas is on-hit-wonder, stretching out Star Wars: A new hope over the last 30+ years.
I would love to see Lucasarts concentrate on new ideas, start making movies or games with other themes or offering their skills to other movies. Instead, Lucasarts is just some ego stroking ulterior entity of George Lucas filled with people that need to learn to say "No George, I don't want to ruin creativity and innovation just because you want Yoda spinning around like a Tasmanian devil". Lucas needs to retire and let his enterprises spread innovation around in Hollywood rather then working on yet another Star Wars spin off product.
Honestly, Lucas needs to see a shrink because I think he has escaped to a galaxy far far away and long ago and can't let go of it. Time for a new thought Lucas, 30+ years is enough obsessing about Leia.
This is surely change the way films are made. (Score:1)
Like Bryce? (Score:2)
(http://www.livejournal.com/users/gilmoure/ | Last Journal: Saturday November 16 2002, @05:41PM)
Re:OMG (Score:3, Funny)
(http://assambassador.com/)
Re:OMG (Score:5, Funny)
In the original version, I posted first!!
Re:next thing you'll know... (Score:2)
But actually, I think you're making a valid point. Advent Children was a great step forward in all-out CG movies, just compare it to that _other_ FF movie, the folks at Square really did their homework this time. Even if it was pure fan service and many people were disappointed about story & characterization for example (I wasn't), they still put the Star Wars prequels to shame.
While I really don't need more films out of the SW universe, should the urge to do / redo some more arise and be unresistable, why not restrict Lucas to delivering some general ideas about the story and some more detailed ones concerning visuals, let the script, characterizations and dialogue be done by one or two skilled writers like William Gibson or Neal Stephenson (just two out of many, and hell, just for laughs, let Rosamunde Pilcher do Episode 2 - The Ultimate Romance Edition!) - as opposed to let large teams of mediocre writers ruin every single bit of creative thought that was (supposedly) there in the first place -, and leave the rest to Square Pictures, or better yet, Square Enix.